Julian Schnabel's 'At Eternity's Gate' to Close New York Film Festival

The film, about Vincent van Gogh's final days, stars Willem Dafoe.

Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate has been selected to screen as the closing night film at the 56th New York Film Festival on Oct. 14 at Alice Tully Hall, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today.

In Gate, artist-turned-filmmaker Schnabel takes a fresh look at the final days of another artist, Vincent van Gogh, who’s played by Willem Dafoe. The cast also includes Oscar Isaac, Rupert Friend, Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner and Mads Mikkelsen.

Schnabel’s collaborators on the film include his co-screenwriters Jean-Claude Carriere and Louise Kugelberg, with Kugelberg also serving as editor, as well as cinematographer Benoit Delhomme.

“At Eternity’s Gate is such a surprising film, for all kinds of reasons. Julian Schnabel makes use of the most up-to-date information about Vincent van Gogh, altering our accepted ideas of how he lived and died; he grounds the film in the very action of painting, the intense contact between an artist and the world of forms and textures colored by light; and he gives us Willem Dafoe’s performance as Vincent — acting this pure is endlessly surprising,” New York Film Festival director and selection committee chair Kent Jones said in announcing the film’s selection.

“I would like to say thank you to Kent Jones and the NYFF selection committee on behalf of Willem Dafoe, who is Vincent van Gogh in the film, and the cast and crew, who I have been so privileged to work with, for choosing At Eternity’s Gate for closing night,” added Schnabel, who previously screened his 2007 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at the festival.

CBS Films will release the film in November, following its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival and its North American premiere at the New York fest, which runs Sept. 28-Oct. 14.

As previously announced, the festival will open with Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite and include Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma as its centerpiece screening.